Sorry, I missed that somehow. I don't recall DSL being around in 1998 (but I'm sure my memory is just wrong). I got on the web around 1994 and it felt like many years before we had DSL or cable internet.
Anyways, I do agree that the 90s web was nicer in many ways. One thing I miss greatly is that people actually hand-crafted websites back then. Sure, they used frames and had construction gifs... but they were hand-crafted. If you searched for "star wars" you got a couple dozen sites that were all different looking (but had similar content). Today this is virtually unheard of. Go try to find a star wars fan website that doesn't use Wikia or some other similar tool.
May be Google can start lowering rank of shitty pages. Oh but those shitty pages have Google ads so they'll lose revenue and their stock would tank.
Also why would a news website care if you have a shitty experience. Their A/B tests are saying customers are more likely to click on ads and sign up if they use the dark patterns.
Their end goal is to make more money. That's what they are optimizing for. If you don't like it, don't go to the website. That's the only signal they give a shit about.
Very few people had speeds in that range — most pages were developed with the assumption that they'd be used by someone on dial-up (and probably 28.8k). It'd be like saying you don't understand why people are complaining now about a slow site when you're using over a 1Gbps fiber connection.
Anyways, I do agree that the 90s web was nicer in many ways. One thing I miss greatly is that people actually hand-crafted websites back then. Sure, they used frames and had construction gifs... but they were hand-crafted. If you searched for "star wars" you got a couple dozen sites that were all different looking (but had similar content). Today this is virtually unheard of. Go try to find a star wars fan website that doesn't use Wikia or some other similar tool.